Problems surrounding the blood pressure-lowering drug Diovan have shed fresh light on opaque and sometimes questionable ties between medical researchers and pharmaceutical firms. More facts behind the alleged clinical data falsification of the drug sold by Novartis Pharma K.K. could be exposed through criminal investigation now that the health ministry has filed an accusation with prosecutors against the Japanese unit of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, saying that the firm engaged in exaggerated advertisement of the drug, generally known by the name Valsartan, using scientific papers based on falsified data.
The root of the problems lies in the industry practice in which drug makers give a huge amount of money to researchers at universities and medical institutions in ways that are not always transparent. The practice itself needs to be scrutinized, along with other fundamental problems including why research papers with falsified data were published without internal checks by the institutions in question.
Doctors at universities and hospitals receiving donations from pharmaceutical companies use drugs sold by them for their patients in clinical research to study the effects of the products. In the Diovan case, it was discovered that an employee of Novartis Pharma took part in the data analysis of the research conducted at universities in and after 2002 while hiding his employment status.